Veeam backups up VMware and Hyper-V servers and virtual machines, but not storage arrays. It states: “Storage snapshots allow backups to take place during business hours without affecting production virtual machines (VMs), permitting a very low recovery point objective (RPO).

"In addition, the snapshots themselves are small, taking up relatively little space. But storage snapshots alone are not sufficient to provide the level of data protection that the modern data centre requires.”

It says its backups (directly from storage snapshots) can be completed 20 times faster than they could with competing methods. This is available in the Enterprise Plus edition of Veeam Backup and Replication.

Explorer for Storage Snapshots “enables recovery ranging from entire VMs to individual files and application items directly from snapshots in production storage. Available in all editions of Veeam Backup and Replication, including the Free Edition.”

This looks to be a good extension of Veeam backup’s range and will surely be followed by Veeam partnerships with other storage array snapshot providers … but then NetApp doesn’t have its own backup software whereas EMC, HP and IBM do. Maybe Veeam is talking to HDS, Fujitsu, Dell and suppliers like them.

Perhaps Veeam may get access to NetApp’s VM translation technology, the one that can move VMs between Hyper-V and VMware?

These things will be delivered with Veeam Backup & Replication v8, which will be generally available in the second half of this year. ®